The Day After: Fumble, Fumbalaya, Fumbleruski

What a joke… The Defensive Line finally sustains a high-level of play into the second half of a game(*), and the Offense completely melts down. This team just can’t get on the same page.

(*)The change from the Wide-Gaping-Hole-9 is astonishing.

Of course, the story of the game was the Eagles inability to hold onto to the football. On three consecutive Offensive plays in the second half, Foles threw an interception (his first since taking over for Vick) which resulted in a Bengals drive and touchdown, a fumble on a botched handoff that was returned for a Defensive TD and a fumble by Clay Harbor that eventually led to a Bengal field goal. For those keeping track, that’s 17 points in under 6 minutes.

The Eagles’ other three turnovers – Maclin’s fumble on the second play of the game, McBriar’s punt that was blocked by his own player(**) and Cedric Thornton’s muffed kick reception(***) – were responsible for the Bengals other 17 points. Six total turnovers, four of which were fumbles, produced 34 total points for the opposing team. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2012 Eagles!

(**)At least we can say the Eagles finally blocked a punt!

(***)Can you really blame a back-up Defensive Tackle for mishandling a kick that came right to him?

Last night’s performance made us think of one thing, and one thing only:

Meanwhile, after getting Philadelphia’s collective hopes up for one week, Nick Foles regressed from “franchise savior” back to middling rookie. Which is fine, he’s a rookie and he’s learning on the job. We can’t expect him to pull come-from-behind wins out of his ass every week… He isn’t Andrew Luck. Or RGIII. Or Russell Wilson(****).

(****)Oh wait… Rookies CAN come right in and propel teams to the playoffs.

The one major knock on Foles is that he can’t throw deep to save his life. Even last week, in his “breakout” performance, Foles was incapable of putting the right amount of touch on balls he threw over 20 yards. He habitually overthrows receivers… so much so, that he overcompensated last night by badly underthrowing a deep ball, which was subsequently picked off.

He will get better. He is an accurate passer and he’ll learn how to connect with receivers down field. But he still hasn’t passed the Bobby Hoying-test and we still can’t see past the blinders yet. We’ve been snake-bitten too many times before. We’d love for Foles to prove the ever-growing horde of believers right, but it’s going to take more than one comeback win against the league’s worst pass Defense.

And we’re really not trying to pile on Foles. He certainly isn’t to blame for the loss to the Bengals, even though the Offense was particularly putrid.

This was just another in a long line of effortless showing by this year’s team. And who ultimately deserves the blame for that? The Walrus, of course.

Though we’re still not convinced Lurie will pull the trigger – again, we’ll officially believe it when we see it – there are seemingly only two games left in Andy’s reign of mediocrity! Two more games to go until we’re free of living in a perpetual Groundhog Day. Two more games until this abomination of a season is finally put to rest.

It’s been a long four months. And an even longer 14 years.

A quick note:

We apologize for the lack of posts recently – and the fact that the 2012 Eagles Magical Mystery Coaching Tour got detoured – but we’re getting everything back on track and will be providing you with more of the Andy Reid hatred you know and love. Keep an eye out for a few things in the next few days, particularly a look at Bill Barnwell’s piece that posted on Grantland today: “In Defense of Andy Reid.”